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Energetic college students all over the country are engaged in
campus-based activism, but their numbers are small. Although both
conservative and progressive students organize on campus, the sum total of activist students
is small compared to the overall student population. Progressive organizations
outnumber conservative groups by a 1 ratio, with a range of issue-specific
groups being the norm for progressives and a single, general conservative organization
the core of conservative campus strength. According to the Higher Education
Research Institute at UCLA, almost equal numbers of first-year students identified
as progressive and conservative in 2003: 27% as progressive, and 23% as
conservative. Perhaps just as relevant is the fact that 50% of first-year students label
themselves independent or unaffiliated.

Campus activists are confronted with the challenge of mobilizing the vast majority
of students who have other priorities besides political activity. Despite unpromising
odds, small numbers of campus activists create and often sustain a wide range of
campaigns, representing various perspectives on issues related to the environment,
labor, reproductive rights, free speech, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT)
people, multiculturalism, and the war. When major issues emerge, as they did in
2003, like the war in Iraq and affirmative action in university admissions, activists are
able to generate a high level of student interest and mass mobilizations.

2

Conservative and progressive students approach activism differently. Because there are fewer conservative
organizations on campus, usually a core group of activists coordinates campaigns
across several issues. Progressives tend to maintain an array of issue-based
organizations that do not regularly function with a coordinated strategy unless they
create a coalition of progressive groups.

Conservatives' shared view of themselves
as being in the minority and enduring a hostile environment on campus
shapes their public education and political activity. They tend to use "fortress
reasoning," focusing on the need to protect themselves from their numerous opponents.
Conservative activists recast some of the terms that have proved successful for
progressives in the past, such as valuing freedom of speech and diversity. Progressives,
however, share no such common message; instead, they usually generate
multiple issue-based messages from their various organizations. They describe a
common feeling of fragmentation.

We were interested in the level of tensions
between activist groups that traditionally disagreed on hot-button topics.
The war in Iraq and the affirmative action court cases created a focus for both conservative
and progressive activists.

3

Political mentors are absent from campus. Virtually all the student
leaders we interviewed described themselves as arriving at college with their politics
already developed. For the most part, their political mentors were their parents or
teachers. Both conservative and progressive students expressed disappointment that
they could not find similar mentors on campus, especially from the faculty. In turn, the
majority of the faculty we interviewed preferred to remain distant or exhibited disinterest
when asked about their involvement with campus political groups.
A few faculty members, mostly progressive, were actively engaged with student
activism. All our sample schools had Student Affairs Offices that provided, at a minimum,
organizational support and training to student groups. However, student leaders
rarely mentioned staff in these offices as their mentors. Without access to ideological
or strategic support on campus, students report they seek it elsewhere.

4

Students are responding to issues of race, gender, and sexual
orientation as they perceive them on campus. Progressive activists
observe forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia persisting at their schools, despite
the impact that previous activism has had on higher education. They view their work
as far from over. Conservative students challenge progressive assessments and compensatory
practices, dismissing them as "unnecessary" programs, "substandard"
academic offerings, or simply "unfair." National conservative spokespeople stimulate
discussion on these topics, providing students with arguments against affirmative
action, feminism, multiculturalism, and area academic programs such as Queer
Studies.

Activists at the single-sex school and the historically Black university in our sample
use a gender or a race lens more readily than student leaders at the other schools to
interpret and analyze their campuses and the issues that interest them. Historically Black
fraternities and sororities are examples of organizations with legacies of both service
and social action that provide an unusual, and often overlooked, source of activism.

5

Debate is unpopular on campus. Contrary to popular opinion, most college
students do not enjoy debating political topics. Often the public hears about
acrimonious confrontations between student groups or between students and their
administrations over hot-button topics in the culture in general, such as the Middle
East, terrorism, reproductive rights and racism, as well as over campus-specific concerns
like union organizing on campus. Both politically uninvolved students and
current student activists reported that they do not value political debate. Either they
were intimidated by what they described as a confrontational situation, or they did
not expect that engagement in formal or informal debate affects opinions. Most student
leaders in this study, with the exception of law students, believed that debate
wasted their time.

Many implications emerge for civil society of a generation of young people who
do not value debate or do not have the skills to engage successfully in it. We suggest that,
without a politically engaged population of young people and leaders who can and
will conduct conversations across difference, we cannot expect a similarly engaged
population of adults.

6

National political organizations successfully influence
campus groups with resources, mentors, and incentives. Both progressive
and conservative groups from the general political sphere are interested in student
activists. These groups regularly become involved with students, often without
having a visible presence on campus.
Some of their methods include:

using students as foot soldiers in electoral or other campaigns;

establishing campus affiliates;

training students to be leaders;

supporting student-led organizations such as newspapers or clubs
with training, materials, and funding;

engaging student support through student activities fees;

providing attractive organizing supplies;

producing low- or no-cost events with political messages that tour campuses; or

offering incentives to individual students for participation in their programs.

Conservative organizations use a coordinated strategy of national organizations
to provide these services. Progressive organizations, while more numerous, are far less
strategic in how they provide support.

7

A "leadership pipeline" exists for both progressives and conservatives,
but their approaches differ. While there appear to be about
equal numbers of opportunities for leadership development for conservative and
progressive students, each group has access to different types of such programs. Centralized
training opportunities, from summer schools to national conferences, exist
for conservatives, but no equivalent, prominent, and multi-issue programs are advertised
to progressive students. Although such training does exist for progressive
activists, it is harder to identify.

Internships, now considered a necessary part of a college student's career preparation,
are available in scores of national political organizations. Information about
these opportunities is available to students through the internet.

Conservative organizations promote their programs more visibly on their websites.
Conservative groups tend to focus on developing public figures or stars, while
progressive groups primarily develop lowerprofile organizers. This distinction is relevant
in part because of the general absence of political mentors from campuses. Conservative
stars perform mentoring roles for students.

8

Centrist students are not actively recruited by either conservative
or progressive campus activists. The majority of college students
engage in community service, volunteer work of some sort, or service learning.
These numbers are growing as a result of directed efforts across the political spectrum
to improve civic engagement among young people. Centrist students, those whose politics
are neither entirely conservative nor progressive, constitute 50% of college students
today. They are the largest body of potentially engaged students on U.S. campuses.
Many centrist students engage in service work, but are not motivated to join
activist groups on campus.

Surprisingly, neither conservative nor progressive activists report that they target
this cohort of students. Centrist students are often the ones who report being "put
off" by activists' recruitment styles. We believe these students constitute an undeveloped
source of potential activists.

[Of the eight major findings summarized above, the treatment of the seventh is here
reprinted in full. For reference notes, see the complete text.]

A "Leadership Pipeline" Exists on Both the Left and the Right

Conservative and progressive movements want to recruit young people into
positions of potential leadership, both to sustain their organizational structures and
to identify leaders who can appeal to young adults. What are the mechanisms that
have produced national conservative figures such as Karl Rove, Dinesh D'Souza,
and Ann Coulter? Who are their progressive counterparts? We researched differences
in how conservative and progressive campus movements define leadership, where
the organizations of today find their young talent, and how campus activists who are
eager to work in movement jobs after graduation find employment.

From surveying the main websites of conservative and progressive groups, we
might easily conclude that conservatives are more active on campus than progressives.
The websites of many of the major conservative groups, including the Independent
Women's Forum, Focus on the Family, and the Eagle Forum, have direct links to
their campus-focused divisions. On the websites of major progressive groups, however,
it was often so difficult to find information relevant to progressive college
students that we were forced to look more carefully at each site. In addition, we
quickly found several prominent conservative organizations specifically focused on
campus politics, including the Young America's Foundation, the Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, and the Collegiate Network, ISI's affiliate.

More difficult to find and seemingly less comprehensive from descriptions, there are
many programs intended to develop political leadership among progressive students.
Examples of national progressive organizations with as strong a commitment to college
campuses as some of the conservative groups were the Feminist Majority Foundation,
which has extensive resources for its Feminist Campus program online, and
the Sierra Club, whose Sierra Student Coalition has its own website. After extensive
Internet research, though, we found that progressive programs were approximately
equal in number, if not greater than, conservative programs. The list we
came up with included 15 conservative educational/training programs, including
conferences and seminars, and 15 progressive educational/training programs.
In addition, we researched 20 conservative and 29 progressive internship programs
among the many regional and national organizations that have internship programs.

Educational/Training Programs

Of the educational and training programs, we were only able to speak with
participants or organizers for two events, both student conferences. One was sponsored
by the conservative Young America's Foundation (YAF), and the other was
organized by the progressive Student Environmental Action Coalition. At the
Young America's Foundation's 25th Annual National Conservative Student
Conference (NCSC) in 2003, we conducted two in-person interviews with
YAF staff involved in organizing the conference and two in-person interviews with
students who attended the conference. In addition, we spoke informally with approximately
five other students at the conference without taking notes; one student who
attended the conference emailed responses to our questions.

The Young America's Foundation describes itself as the "principal outreach
organization of the conservative movement." Its national summer conference is
its largest outreach event. Over the course of their week in DC in 2003, 187 young
conservatives heard about 30 hours of speeches by major conservative figures,
culminating in an appearance by conservative writer Ann Coulter. The conference's
goals, according to its organizer, were to educate students on conservative
issues (something she said the students do not get on college campuses) and to create
a "network of like-minded individuals."

The conference format used a traditional pedagogical approach, with a series of
speakers addressing the entire group. Formal interaction in the sessions was limited
to questions directed to the speakers. Attendees across the board expressed enthusiasm
for the opportunity to be present. The students we talked to saw both of these
aspects of the conference as valuable. Both students and speakers at the conference
repeatedly referred to a phenomenon that Kathryn Lopez of the National Review
called the "campus liberal orthodoxy," and complained that they did not feel comfortable
talking about their conservative beliefs on campus. Thus, they were happy
to be in an environment in which they felt they could discuss politics without being
attacked. They also asserted repeatedly that there was no party line at the conference,
which represented conservative views from libertarianism to Christian conservatism.

The conference's purpose, however, was not solely educational. While the conference
organizer made it clear that YAF does not try to create political leaders at the
NCSC, the event served as a stepping-stone for many young conservatives to become
actively involved in conservative political activism. All of the students we spoke with
talked about networking at the conference with other students and with representatives
of nonprofits and lobbying groups. One, for example, said she got an
internship with Oliver North because she had met him at the conference the previous
year. At a panel discussion including three "graduates" of the NCSC, each of the
panelists said people they had met and information they had received at the conference
allowed them to become more involved in the conservative movement. Jim
Graham, now executive director of the Texas Right to Life Committee, said of the
conference, "I think the most important thing I realized is that…there are people
who change the world…and I can be one of them." Kathryn Lopez, an NCSC
alumna, who went on to intern at the Heritage Foundation, said she would not
have known about Heritage without the NCSC. Similarly, a current law student at
Harvard University said the conference "connected [her] with the conservative
movement," and spoke of using attendance at the conference as a credential
with conservative organizations. Thus, through a combination of educational
events featuring celebrity speakers and networking opportunities, the YAF's
National Conservative Student Conference contributes significantly to the development
of conservative leaders.

We were unable to find a progressive equivalent to the YAF National Conservative
Student Conference, which led us to conclude that no centralized
progressive training program exists. Although there are numerous programs
offering training for campus organizers from groups such as the AFL-CIO's Union
Summer, Feminist Majority Foundation, Sierra Student Coalition, and the Student
Environmental Action Coalition, these programs tend to be more narrowly focused
on specific issue areas, rather than offering a general training on progressive organizing.
These organizer trainings, which last just a few days, are generally shorter than

YAF's conference, do not bring in celebrity speakers, and are focused on organizationbuilding
rather than discussing political ideas. And while there is one program, the
Century Institute (run by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank),
that offers a more theoretical introduction to general progressive ideas, it serves only
around thirty students a year. This lack of commitment to ideological training weakens
progressive leadership development in important ways. Leaders become known
by their issues alone, and little cross-issue work emerges.

Internships

We conducted interviews with nine internship coordinators from five progressive
and four conservative organizations: four by email, four over the phone,
and one in person. We interviewed seven interns by email and one by telephone; four
of them had interned at two conservative organizations, and the other four had
interned at three progressive organizations. The internship programs we studied
varied widely in size, from small programs with just two to three interns at a time to
large programs like the conservative Family Research Council's Witherspoon Fellows
Program, which has fourteen interns at a time and includes an extensive educational
component. We were unable to secure cooperation to speak with interns or internship
coordinators at the two largest internship programs we found in our search, the
conservative Heritage Foundation (fifty summer interns) and the Libertarian Cato
Institute.

The conservative and progressive internship coordinators generally described the
goals of their internship programs in similar terms, saying that they hoped to get
assistance with their work from the interns and to provide them with experience in the
policy world. Several of the coordinators (both progressive and conservative) felt
that both the interns and their organizations benefited from the degree to which
interns were allowed to do serious work and were integrated into the day-to-day organizational
operations. Several also mentioned that they had problems advertising
their internship programs and would like to be able to publicize the internships
more widely. At the organizations we studied, internship programs often served as
points of entry for jobs after graduation, in spite of the small number of full-time staff
at such organizations. This seemed to be true more often for conservative organizations.

All of the interns who responded seemed very happy with their internships. This
response was probably related in part to students having applied to specific organizations
and to their self-selection, since those who responded may have been more likely
to be happy with their internships. The interns we talked with had varying levels
of pre-internship political activism on their respective campuses. Some had not
been involved in any political groups, whereas others had been leaders in college
political organizations and had volunteered for local campaigns. Nearly all,
though, regardless of pre-internship political experience, said that their
internships had affected their plans for future involvement in activism. For some,
that meant considering going into grassroots organizing directly after college. For
others, participation in an internship program broadened their view of politics and
allowed them to integrate political views into their daily lives. In the words of one
intern, "It's not really my career plans that have been changed as much as my idea of
politics, my attitude towards activism, and my genuine desire to make a difference."
All of the interns seemed to think that the internships would affect their activism on
campus: they planned to be more active in groups, and felt that they had gained skills
to make their activism more effective. As one intern said, "I know that I will take back
new skills, resources, and a greater passion to help advance the mission of our [Young
America's Foundation] student group."

Those interns who did plan careers in the political world (whether or not those
plans were made before or after their internships) clearly saw the internships as stepping
stones to future jobs. One intern was preparing to go directly from her internship
into a job at the same organization. While this direct step from internship to
job is relatively rare given the small staff size of most progressive nonprofit organizations,
political internships give interns unusual opportunities to meet political
and nonprofit leaders who might help them get jobs after graduation. In addition,
interns often do the same kinds of work as staff members, and thus gain an edge in
experience over other job applicants. Many of the interns expressed surprise at the
level of responsibility they received in their organizations. Interns generally cited
these two aspects of political internships —networking and job experience
—as the most valuable features of the programs. At the Young America's
Foundation's National Conservative Student Conference, a panel of three 'graduates'
of the conference called internships "essential" for students interested in working
in politics.

So, then, who wins the leadership development race? The conventional
wisdom is that conservatives are putting more resources than progressives into
campus activism and programs that develop campus leadership. Our study
suggests, however, that the picture is somewhat more complicated. Because conservative
and progressive groups approach leadership development in
very different ways, it is difficult to directly compare their programs. From
the information we gathered, it is not possible to assess the relative effectiveness
of conservative and progressive groups' respective programs to develop campus
leaders. However, we can suggest some ways in which left- and right-wing programs
and recruitment efforts seem to differ.

The Internet is now the dominant
recruitment tool for programs of the kind
we studied, and, as noted earlier, it was
much easier to find information about
campus-oriented programs on conservative
sites than on progressive ones. This may be
due in part to the importance of college
campuses to conservative cultural discourse. Conservative organizations from
the Young America's Foundation to the
Eagle Forum describe college campuses as
hotbeds of liberal or "politically correct"
activism, places where conservative ideas
simply are not welcome. YAF president
Ron Robinson, for example, spoke of a
"pattern of viciousness" aimed at outspoken
campus conservatives; he maintained
that the "campus establishment is either
afraid of or hostile to conservative ideas."
Conservative political organizations, such
as Accuracy in Academia, ACTA, or the
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
devote considerable spaceeffort to studying
and publicizing their claim of liberal
bias in academia. Since conservatives see
college campuses as sites of liberal indoctrination,
they put a great deal of energy
into making Internet and other resources
for campus conservatives accessible.

Conservative sites also make various
kinds of appeals and use different kinds of
language in attempting to attract students
(although we cannot tell from our study
whether these appeals translate into programmatic
differences). Conservative sites
make proclamations like "IWF [Independent
Women's Forum] is taking back the
campus," and try to appeal to the individual
frustrations of conservative students.
The Eagle Forum Collegians website, for
example, asks students:

Are you tired of student fees being used to promote liberal causes?

Are you concerned about the blatant advocacy of radical leftist ideas in your classroom?

Are you being pressured by the politically correct agenda on campus?

The Independent Women's Forum similarly appeals to conservative students'
frustrations, saying its campus project offers "information, guidance, and support
for students inundated with rigid political correctness."

In contrast to these general appeals to
frustration about perceived hostility on
the part of the campus establishment,
progressive groups' student programs
tended to assume that students accessing
the site were already solidly in the
progressive activist camp, and focused
more on networking and organization building.
Almost every campus progressive
organization featured "networking"
ideas prominently on its site; Feminist
Campus (www.feministcampus.org), for
example, had a message board for student activists to network and post event ideas,
while JustAct (www.justact.org) talked
about "building a national grassroots youth network." The one progressive organization
that used a personal, emotional appeal to students as a recruitment technique was
Planned Parenthood's 'Vox' campus outreach group:

What would you do if you knew that anti-choice politicians fight to deny women
and men access to… information and services?

What would you do if you knew that anti-choice organizations spend millions
of dollars on campuses each year to limit access to reproductive
health programs and to keep college students in the dark about sexuality?
What if they were on your campus and tried to limit your access?

You'd want to protect the services and information that you and your
friends rely on, and Vox: Voices or Planned Parenthood is the way to do that.

The final major difference between conservative and progressive organizations'
campus recruitment efforts is more programmatic. Conservative organizations
focus on stars, while progressive groups focus on organizers. Groups like the YAF
help campus conservative groups pay for conservative luminaries like author Ann
Coulter and humorist Ben Stein to come to campus. The Student Environmental
Action Coalition, the only progressive speakers bureau program we found, helps
students get in touch with student organizers who live close enough to speak at their
campuses relatively cheaply.

The conservative focus on 'stars' is not limited to speakers: conservative organizations
also seem more interested in creating future star leaders than do
progressive organizations. Jeff Nelson, Vice President for Publications for the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, identified a unique characteristic of the conservative
movement: "I think one of the principal, even signal, features of the conservative
movement is its overriding concern for nurturing young people."

The Young America's Foundation, for example, has a "Club 100" program, which
gives students rewards for bringing speakers to campus and hosting other events. The
top Club 100 point earners win a trip to the Reagan Ranch, now used as an education
and training center by the YAF. In the words of YAF president Ron Robinson,
conservative groups focus on creating strong leaders because they "don't need a
majority of activists." Conservatives know that college students are more liberal than
the population at large, but, with wellfunded, well-organized campus groups,
conservatives can make as much of a splash as more widely popular progressive groups.

The Path to Movement Work

We also solicited retrospective information from young staff people at movement
organizations to learn more about the paths they took to reach their current positions.
We contacted 29 organizations and received 16 responses.

Young staffers describe their work primarily in terms of career development,
not movement building. There were no distinctions between staffers working
at conservative or progressive organizations on this issue. Almost all the young
staffers had been active in social or political movement organizations in college,
and 100% felt positively about working in a movement position. Although some of
the job descriptions were clerical or administrative – not the coveted policy analyst or
media jobs – staffers across the board were pleased with their situations. Even more
surprising still was the consistency of response to a question like: How well does
this job fit with what you want to do with your life? All of the respondents described
their satisfaction with their jobs in terms of personal career development, with only
one respondent articulating a desire to contribute to a larger movement.

The process of landing a job in a competitive market during an economic
downturn seems to be very similar for both progressives and conservative
young graduates. Everyone in our sample acknowledged the crucial role networking
plays in landing a job. One student leader was quick to point out that,
while networking was "instrumental" in getting a job, "I was not given the job
because my contact knew me. I was given the job because my contact knew my work
and my writing." Another took a step further back to speak about how, even before
using her network to apply for—and get— a job, networking had been "the foundation
of gaining the skills and background necessary to secure [her] current job."
Respondents mentioned interning, meeting key players, getting entry-level positions,
attending conferences, and using the Internet as part of the networking process.

When pressed about the role of college career service offices, almost all respondents
indicated that they either did not use the service or did not find it as useful as individualized
networking and web searching. Progressive students often mentioned
Idealist.org as a valuable site; conservative respondents did not mention a single job
listing service for conservatives. Not one student from our on-site interviews, in
response to a specific question about national organizations, mentioned that
they noticed a presence of recruiters from outside organizations on campus. And no
one expressed the expectation that they could get either a progressive or a conservative
movement job by going through their career services office. This was true
even at schools in our sample with extremely pro-active career services staffs.

Although there are probably more progressive job openings available,
because of the dispersed nature of the progressive movement, more centralized
resources exist for conservative students to use to further their activist
careers. At times like these, when a Republican is in the White House, or in any state
with a Republican governor, conservative graduates clearly have more opportunities
to work near the seats of power; the Republican Party structure quickly funnels promising
young leaders into positions of responsibility. Conservative students mentioned
more often than progressive students traditional avenues of networking, like
working as an intern on Capitol Hill or volunteering on an election campaign. Progressive
students described similar opportunities to network, but they benefited
from a website for progressive jobseekers, www.idealist.org, that has no
counterpart on the Right. Conservative students often described their devotion to hard
work and the willingness to go the extra mile as indicators of their commitment to
movement work: "It's hard to find people like me who will sacrifice for the group—
take a day off and maybe impact their grades." While not expressed explicitly,
some conservative students may hold the expectation that these qualities are desirable
traits in the competitive job market.